The Curse of the Hurkle-Durkle

A few months ago, an old friend came to stay with us for a couple of nights. She loved the bed in the guest room and said she woke up early each morning, but then snuggled in for a hurkle-durkle. A hurkle-durkle? What was that? She told us it’s a Scottish term for lounging in bed after you wake up. (Those Scots have the best words.)

McIrish and I looked at each other in wonder and delight. We both wake up early, trained for decades by our sadistic children, who, even as teens, never slept late. This staying in bed thing…this possibly falling back asleep idea was a revelation.

After Renée left, we gave it a shot. It took some training and mental discipline, this hurkle-durkling, but we were committed to the art. McIrish had some trouble remembering the term and would say hunkle-dunkle, herpie-derpie, heckle-deckle…This is the same guy who calls my ranunculus plants the “ridiculous flowers.” But I knew what he meant (and quite liked his terms, too). It took weeks, but finally, it took. “I woke up at 5:34,” one of us would proudly pronounce, “but hurkle-durkled, and look! It’s 7:42!” Never having slept in, we were like kids on Christmas morning. Each morning, we would proudly inform the other of what time we woke up, and how long we hurkle-durkled.

Then came the downside. One morning, successfully hurkle-durkling till 7:20, I got out of bed, made the ten cups of coffee we require for the two of us, took the puppy out for a romp, came back in, fed her and sat on the porch with my coffee to read a bit. The minutes ticked by. Soon, I thought, my beloved would get up and tell me how long he hurkle-durkled. I glanced at the time. 8:02. Wow. That’s a long hurkle-durkle for him. But since he is a firefighter, and because a solid eight hours often eludes him, I never want to wake him up. What if he tossed and turned until 3 a.m.? What if he had no sleep at all at the firehouse the night before?

I smiled benignly, glad that my honey was still resting. Then came 8:20. 8:44. What if, I thought, he died in his sleep? Or had a stroke and was trying to call for me, but because the door to the bedroom is shut, I couldn’t hear him? What if he didn’t die, but just had a heart attack, and needs CPR, and I’m just sitting here, accepting Buttercup’s stinky blanket as she presents it to me again and again, and my husband is dying? Then again, what if he’s just wicked tired?

At 9:15—the latest he, a former paperboy, had ever slept in his life—I decided I needed proof of life. I crept into the bedroom. The fan was on, so I couldn’t hear breathing. So I was a widow after all, I thought. It had to happen someday. Except I probably wasn’t.

But being a writer, I can picture eleventy hundred things at once. Life insurance policy, telling the kids, not having to watch This Old House anymore, painting the kitchen cabinets yellow, loneliness, noble grief, the poor grandbabies not having their beloved Gup, going on vacation alone to the places he would have loved to see, calling a trash company since I would not be going to the dump every week, will I date again, probably not, maybe if he looks like RDJ or Denzel, better get one of those meal-delivery services, I’m getting a sprayer for the kitchen sink, how will I live the rest of my life alone—

“What?” he groaned, finally stirring to find me staring down at him like I was Annie Wilkes and he was Paul.

“I thought you were dead,” said I, not at all creepy.

“I’m humpty-dumptying,” he said.

“It’s 9:20,” I said. With that, he jolted out of bed, distressed that the morning was so old. But he wasn’t dead, readers, so I was the opposite of distressed. Oh, normal life! How lovely you are!

Since then, we have managed our hurkle-durkles to twenty minutes or so. But they are sweet, those twenty minutes. And should his hurkle-durkle last too long, I will bring in a mirror to hold under my beloved’s nose.